`Animal Crackers' Revival Cracks 'Em Up

`Animal Crackers' Cracks 'em Up

October 19, 1992|By MALCOLM L. JOHNSON; Courant Theater Critic

Hooray for Capt. Spalding. Hooray for The Professor, Emanuel Ravelli and Mrs. Rittenhouse. Hooray for all the characters and cast of "Animal Crackers," in fact. And a special hooray for director Charles Repole, once the Eddie Cantor banjo-eyed, song-and-dance man of "Whoopee," who is showing Goodspeed Opera House audiences that he has a special touch with the Marx Brothers, too.

In many ways, Repole's reconstruction of the live Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo works more uproariously than the 1930 movie, which presents the brothers in their prime with some brilliantly zany routines, but is terribly disjointed and uncinematic. Remembering the film, it's also easy to forget that "Animal Crackers" was originally a musical -- apart from "Hooray for Captain Spalding," which ultimately became Groucho's theme song for "You Bet Your Life."

As it is dedicated to "the heritage of the musical," it would hardly be in character for the Goodspeed to put on a show with only a few songs. So the new, reconstituted "Animal Crackers" uses tunes from the original production (though not "Watching the Clouds Roll By") and Harry Ruby-Bert Kalmar collaborations from other shows and movies (most notably "Three Little Words" -- introduced by Bing Crosby in the Amos 'n' Andy movie "Check and Double Check"). The Goodspeed revival even insinuates a new song by musical director Albin Konopka and lyricist Michael Colby, "The Social Ladder." It's an amusing enough throwaway number, performed by a pair of scheming socialite divas who are the villainesses of the piece.

At times, especially when the more serious of the two young couples in love join in duet, "Animal Crackers" sounds like a quaint, forgotten operetta. These are nice enough moments, but this is a Marx Brothers show, their last hooray together on stage. So "Animal Crackers" has a tall order. Not only must it keep the laughter coming, it must also create a sense of what it was like to be there when Minnie's boys were young (between 27 and 32) and irrepressibly wild on stage.

Thanks to Frank Ferrante (Groucho/Capt. Spalding), Les Marden (Harpo/The Professor) and Robert Michael Baker(Chico/Ravelli), and to Repole and his choreographer, Tony Stevens, the Goodspeed's "Animal Crackers" both cracks us up and presents the brothers as they might have been, almost 64 years ago (the show opened Oct. 23, 1928).

The centerpiece, of course, is Ferrante, who has made a career of playing Groucho, most visibly in "Groucho: A Life in Revue," in which he aged from 15 to 85. A little bizarrely, Ferrante has transformed himself into the Marx brother, Julius, from his ostrich stride to his suggestively fluttering eyebrows to his sweeping cigar gestures. If Ferrante pushes too hard at times (Groucho was always the most relaxed of the brothers), he also invests the lionized explorer, Capt. Jeffrey Spalding, with boundless energy and playfulness. Like Groucho, his singing voice is raw, rude and sharp, amusingly unmusical.

Marsden, also a veteran of "A Life in Revue," proves equally adept as the silent, strange, wild-eyed Harpo, forever chasing women through the pretentiously opulent art deco rooms of the Rittenhouse Manor, as designed by John Falabella. And yoked with two such seasoned veterans, Baker more than holds his own as the Italian-accented, absurdly punning Ravelli. The miracle of Marsden and Baker, though, is that they play -- or seem to play through some magical stage trick -- the harp and piano in dazzling tours de force in the first and second acts.

From Capt. Spalding's first entrance, borne on a litter as the assemblage joins in their "Hooray" to the conquering hero, through to the brothers'ridiculous quartet in "Four of the Three Musketeers" (with the graceful, self-effacing Craig Rubano as straight man Zeppo), "Animal Crackers" belongs to Ferrante, Marsden and Baker. Yet they have a wonderfully upper-crust innocent in Celia Tackaberry, whose sweet-faced, tall Mrs. Rittenhouse comes across like Eleanor Roosevelt caught in a madhouse.

Hal Robinson neatly spoofs the grandly triumphant immigrant tycoon as Roscoe W. Chandler, alias Abie the Fish Peddler, and Donald Christopher makes a risibly imperious butler. Ample, wide-eyed Anna McNeely and svelte, sinister Brenda O`Brien combine drolly as the two schemers out to steal the millionaire's precious masterpiece, the better to humiliate Mrs. Rittenhouse. Young love is ably served by Keith Bernardo and Deanna Wells as the more serious and operatic types, a painter and a reporter, and by Michael O'Steen and Jeanne Schweppe as the singin'dancing' jazz babies, a gossip columnist and a society flapper. And Konopka makes a small musical ensemble sound just right for the gemlike Goodspeed house. Is is fun? Would it brighten a gloomy autumn or winter day, or put a warm afterglow on a drive east of the river? You bet your life.